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On the subject of HL1: MMOD, I've got a stupid question. Is it a mod for your existing copy of Half Life? Or is it effectively a new game with its own launcher? Just curious how it mechanically functions on Steam.
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Mar 15, 2023 13:09
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Bumhead posted:HL1 is an interesting one to pin down in the context of playing an "old school FPS". I guess it's one of our earliest examples of a classic shooter where the shooting wasn't necessarily the main draw of the game. As a single player narrative campaign, it by and large looks and plays like every other FPS campaign you've played in the 25 years since - IMO even moreso than something like System Shock 2, Deus Ex or Thief. To add to this, HL1 basically invented the modern single player narrative campaign. Levels went from being mazes with monsters and keycards to interconnected setpieces with scripted sequences and npcs almost overnight. The tram ride was genuinely impressive at the time because it set up a coherent setting with a life of its own before everything went to hell. It was so influential that the things it pioneered are now taken for granted as a normal part of modern game design.
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Mar 15, 2023 13:16
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I think of Half Life as taking cues from the systems-heavy approach of immersive sims and putting it on rails. Their games are broadly linear and scripted, but the game mechanics are varied and cross-pollinate, mingling with the advanced (for their time) AI behaviors, enabling small-scale choices that change how scenarios play out. Probably part of why they're fun to speedrun, the flexibility of the game's systems also allow for sequence breaking.
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Mar 15, 2023 13:53
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Termina Velocity chat: did anyone else think Earth had it coming in the game's backstory? Even as a kid playing the shareware, the idea of the "Alliance of Spacefaring Alien Races" with Earth at its head sounded like a race-based Terran Empire that aliens would be right to hate.
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Mar 15, 2023 14:27
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ponzicar posted:To add to this, HL1 basically invented the modern single player narrative campaign. Levels went from being mazes with monsters and keycards to interconnected setpieces with scripted sequences and npcs almost overnight. The tram ride was genuinely impressive at the time because it set up a coherent setting with a life of its own before everything went to hell. It was so influential that the things it pioneered are now taken for granted as a normal part of modern game design. And that stuff is 100% still worth seeing. I still think HL1 does some of that stuff as well if not better than what's followed. You've got the birth of the modern single player narrative campaign but without a lot of the fluff or gameplay resistance that was added to those types of games through later years. Half Life remains very much a 90's PC shooter with all the responsive player agency, control and charm that entails. It's just not as much of a neat fit as Doom or Quake etc are in the context of todays boomer shooters or revisiting their inspirations. It's just a different proposition to go back to, but one still worth seeing for my money.
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Mar 15, 2023 14:28
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I don't know if I would give HL1 all the credit for modern game design. When you only look at the pantheon of influential PC Shooter Games it might look that way but Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and Goldeneye all predate Half-Life and have elements that I've seen people credit Half-Life for inventing. HL1 deserves its place in history but it's as much a culmination of a decade of game design progress as it is the beginning of a new epoch. If it had never existed I'm not convinced modern game design would be particularly different.
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Mar 15, 2023 14:48
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RE was influential but not really groundbreaking, it was heavily derivative of Alone in the Dark mixed with inventory management ripped from adventure games. The scope was a bit grander and more marketable, but at it's core was a 3D adventure game with awful combat. Cut to now and RE 7 and 8 are Half Lifes and 8 in VR is even a Half Life Alyx.
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Mar 15, 2023 15:39
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I also adored MGS at the time (and I guess I still do. Let me buy it on Steam ffs) but I'm struggling to think of many other games that look or play like it? Or even that many that borrow its individual components? MGS-clone is a sub genre we've missed out on, come to think of it. I'd totally play more games that look and play like MGS does.
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Mar 15, 2023 16:11
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Volte posted:HL1 deserves its place in history but it's as much a culmination of a decade of game design progress as it is the beginning of a new epoch. If it had never existed I'm not convinced modern game design would be particularly different.
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Mar 15, 2023 16:22
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SCheeseman posted:RE was influential but not really groundbreaking, it was heavily derivative of Alone in the Dark mixed with inventory management ripped from adventure games. The scope was a bit grander and more marketable, but at it's core was a 3D adventure game with awful combat. Cut to now and RE 7 and 8 are Half Lifes and 8 in VR is even a Half Life Alyx. Bumhead posted:I also adored MGS at the time (and I guess I still do. Let me buy it on Steam ffs) but I'm struggling to think of many other games that look or play like it? Or even that many that borrow its individual components? There are tons of games, especially on consoles, that collectively had all the elements that Half-Life gets credit for, from slower pacing, interactive set pieces, cinematic presentation. scripted horror moments, linear narrative-driven plots, NPCs with dialogue, objectives beyond key hunting, and so on. Half-Life took all that stuff, placed it in the context of a first-person shooter, and made something great with it, but like Resident Evil, it was influential without being groundbreaking. If anything it would be more fair to say that Half-Life was the first mainstream shooter not to come out of a desire to make the next Doom and instead take its inspiration from elsewhere, effectively killing off the "Doom-clone" subgenre, and for that I give it full credit. Quake 2 also deserves some credit in that regard I think, although I'm not a huge fan of its single-player campaign. Volte fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Mar 15, 2023 |
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Mar 15, 2023 16:41
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Bumhead posted:I also adored MGS at the time (and I guess I still do. Let me buy it on Steam ffs) but I'm struggling to think of many other games that look or play like it? Or even that many that borrow its individual components? There's some really bad MGS1 clones on PS1 if you have a high tolerance for junk. Like this one! 
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Mar 15, 2023 17:01
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Volte posted:Quake 2 also deserves some credit in that regard I think, although I'm not a huge fan of its single-player campaign. I would say Unreal too, though that was much closer in time to Half-Life. Unreal was just a phenomenal game and I've been binging Unreal simgle player mods for like a month straight. There's never been another game like it, it has a subtlety and meditative vibe that has never been matched--even UT threw all that out to become an arena shooter.
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Mar 15, 2023 18:30
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One of the biggest things both games do that often gets overlooked in discussions like this is the way levels lead into each other by sharing first and last spaces. You never leave the contiguous world, the load point happens and you resume walking down the same hall you were walking down a moment ago. That's why Black Mesa feels like a real place you're proceeding through and Unreal feels like an epic journey across the planet. Both games do break up the path a couple of times (teleporters, the kidnap sequence) but other than those few moments you can mentally trace a line through a long sequence of levels. Not a lot of FPSes were doing that at the time
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Mar 15, 2023 18:43
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In Training posted:There's some really bad MGS1 clones on PS1 if you have a high tolerance for junk. Like this one! There was the two Headhunter games as well, they were kind of going after MGS' lunch.
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Mar 15, 2023 18:44
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Volte posted:I'm just saying the recurring "before Half-Life blew off the doors of perception, games were abstract key-hunt mazes without a narrative" story is bunk, and only makes sense if you're looking specifically at the Abstract Key-Hunt Maze Without A Narrative FPS genre which something of a tautology. Most of those mid-late 90s shooters were still living in the shadow of Doom (and even Wolf3D), so yes, they mostly shared in that DNA. But that wasn't the only thing that was going on. Quake 2 single player is tech Hexen, it's not just uninteresting, it's bad. Half Life isn't cinematic, cinema is about the camera. Half Life has no camera, you see the world through the eyes of Gordon Freeman 100% of the time. This also means occasionally being stuck in a room being talked at, but on a recent replay I was surprised by how often you could just waltz past of even kill who was talking, I think HL2 polluted my memories. What's interesting though is that in addition to discarding cinema for an immersive perspective, game mechanics are also as unabstracted as possible, the UI diegetic and minimal. Valve's try their hardest to not only be un-cinematic, but un-video game. It's like they're prototyping holodeck narratives, which I guess puts their VR obsession in perspective. They're not the first to do a first person action adventure game with a diegetic UI, but perhaps the first to be called "cinematic", with a 3D engine finally able to simulate the bare necessities to allow for low-fi stageplays to unfold alongside action set pieces without looking like total poo poo. Being able to do those things convincingly is likely why people give it that label. SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Mar 15, 2023 |
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Mar 15, 2023 18:57
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SCheeseman posted:Quake 2 single player is tech Hexen, it's not just uninteresting, it's bad. lol cmon
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Mar 15, 2023 19:26
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Quake 2 absolutely does not hold up compared to Half-Life or Unreal. I was a big fan of it back in the day (even a few years after release), but my recent replay attempt was an absolute slog. I can play Quake or Doom at the drop of a hat, but Q2 is just... blah.
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Mar 15, 2023 19:38
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Quake 2 was at its best in multiplayer and the mods.
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Mar 15, 2023 19:40
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Unreal 1 doesn;t hold up either, it's poo poo
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Mar 15, 2023 19:40
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Speaking of, I tried a few hours of that Entropy Zero 2 half life 2 mod that I've seen get good reviews and I found it to be awful. The writing is excruciatingly bad.
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Mar 15, 2023 19:41
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Deakul posted:Quake 2 was at its best in multiplayer and the mods. Yes, it was quite good there… I just wish it hadn’t bled so much attention and momentum from Quake in the process. Q2’s single player was the first campaign in a game by id Software I didn’t bother to finish, and despite its flaws Unreal deservedly wiped the floor with it just a few months later. Unreal is a bit unfocused and tips its hand in various ways at being Epic’s first FPS, but man, it was so fresh in 1998. Its art and audio direction have held up a lot better than Quake II’s too - I just wish its source could be opened at this point. Edit: Quantum of Phallus posted:Speaking of, I tried a few hours of that Entropy Zero 2 half life 2 mod that I've seen get good reviews and I found it to be awful. The writing is excruciatingly bad. I don’t know about that one, but Penumbra: Necrologue rubbed me the wrong way just a few minutes in. Free or not, it’s the only thing hidden in my Steam library.
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Mar 15, 2023 19:45
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Quantum of Phallus posted:Unreal 1 doesn;t hold up either, it's poo poo much like your posting 
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Mar 15, 2023 19:49
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Severed Steel is cool but I wish it was a little more like FEAR, a little slower paced and darker.
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Mar 15, 2023 19:58
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haveblue posted:One of the biggest things both games do that often gets overlooked in discussions like this is the way levels lead into each other by sharing first and last spaces. You never leave the contiguous world, the load point happens and you resume walking down the same hall you were walking down a moment ago. That's why Black Mesa feels like a real place you're proceeding through and Unreal feels like an epic journey across the planet. Both games do break up the path a couple of times (teleporters, the kidnap sequence) but other than those few moments you can mentally trace a line through a long sequence of levels. Not a lot of FPSes were doing that at the time I agree, though I think Unreal did even better by not just making the world one big place, but by making many of the levels big nonlinear adventures in their own right, carrying much of the best of "boomer" level design into the mew era. "Bluff Eversmoking" is far superior to amy chapter from Half-Life. Quantum of Phallus posted:Unreal 1 doesn;t hold up either, it's poo poo turn on you're monitor
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Mar 15, 2023 20:45
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1) Half life also leans on first person platforming. it blew chunks then, its even worse now. Prepare for your greatest enemies - a finicky crouch superjump and ladders. 2) I always thought of Goldeneye as a spiritual successor to the earth levels in Duke 3d. Rare famously built out "real" places and architecture first. Then they threw in objectives, enemies, etc. I think that's why it still feels unique even today. 3) Metroid Prime is over 20 years old. How's the remaster and how does it hold up? I never got very far because I despise Wii's pointer controls.
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Mar 15, 2023 21:11
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DF gave it a pretty glowing review. Looks solid imo.
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Mar 15, 2023 21:16
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Narcissus1916 posted:
Really good. It's one of the best looking games on Switch
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Mar 15, 2023 21:18
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Terminally Bored posted:Playing Terminal Velocity Boosted Edition and it's... fine? Just a barebones port. It makes me want to play Magic Carpet again though. Wonder if that ever gets a 'remaster'.
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Mar 15, 2023 21:40
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HL1 platforming is decent as far as first person jumping goes imo. You have plenty of control in the air and when you land. Hell you can even hop and curve around corners without losing momentum. Goldsrc movement is as predictable as it can get. I'm a little biased when it comes to crouch jumping or long jumping though, hl1 was my first real PC game and I played it and tons of mods religiously growing up. I get that it's not really intuitive but if you're just piloting a box with legs, it makes sense. Also, I love Xen.  Desolate floating alien rock dimensions are pretty cool
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Mar 15, 2023 21:47
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Xen had some super bullshit platforming but that's all I really remember hating. The rest of it was fine.
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Mar 15, 2023 22:02
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The Kins posted:Looks like they've given the remaster out to anyone who'd bought the stand-alone, not-part-of-some-compilation version of the DOS game on Steam or GOG. Which is nice of them! It was based on the Microsoft version with the extra level Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Mar 15, 2023 |
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Mar 15, 2023 22:06
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Chas McGill posted:Severed Steel is cool but I wish it was a little more like FEAR, a little slower paced and darker. I don't like the tilted guns and camera angle thing it does at all, and it bums me because the rest of it looks amazing. 
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Mar 15, 2023 22:16
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Severed Steel is not FEAR but I love it. But I also want a FEAR inheritor.
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Mar 16, 2023 00:09
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Barudak posted:Severed Steel is not FEAR but I love it. I mean that's exactly what Trepang2 and to a lesser extent Selaco are.
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Mar 16, 2023 02:09
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shoeberto posted:Quake 2 absolutely does not hold up compared to Half-Life or Unreal. I was a big fan of it back in the day (even a few years after release), but my recent replay attempt was an absolute slog. I can play Quake or Doom at the drop of a hat, but Q2 is just... blah. Quake 2 is way better than unreal. Unreal has a bestiary that mostly comprises of Daikatana-like insects and annoyances and rubbish, unimpactful weapons (though the flakcannon mostly makes up for the rest). Quake 2 isn't amazing, but it's got punchy weapons and fun body horror monstrosities to use them on. They've both got a banging soundtrack to be fair to Unreal, though.
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Mar 16, 2023 02:25
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Rev. Melchisedech Howler posted:Quake 2 is way better than unreal. Unreal has a bestiary that mostly comprises of Daikatana-like insects and annoyances and rubbish, unimpactful weapons (though the flakcannon mostly makes up for the rest). I love fighting the Skarrj, I think that might be the first time that we see a humanoid enemy really bob, weave, and dodge like a human player would that I can think of? Elites in Halo really locked down that segment 3 years later, though.
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Mar 16, 2023 02:57
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It has been a while since I've played it but I swear that while the Skaarj were really good at dodging projectiles, if you didn't shoot at them they'd just circle strafe around you shooting energy balls, and didn't really do much more. I never would have characterized them as being anywhere near as sophisticated as the Elites or Half-Life's soldiers. I thought they were just kind of irritating to fight and the poor weapon feel didn't make successfully landing shots on them as satisfying as it should be. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 03:59
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BattleMaster posted:It has been a while since I've played it but I swear that while the Skaarj were really good at dodging projectiles, if you didn't shoot at them they'd just slowly circle strafe around you shooting energy balls. I never would have characterized them as being anywhere as sophisticated as the Elites or Half-Life's soldiers. Yeah, that was their most basic attack pattern if you did literally nothing in response. But if you were running around shooting back, the combination of strafing(!) and responding to your shots with a dodge move(!!) made them feel very different from, say, most of the Quake 2 bestiary. By modern standards they probably aren't that smart, yeah.
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Mar 16, 2023 04:02
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haveblue posted:Yeah, that was their most basic attack pattern if you did literally nothing in response. But if you were running around shooting back, the combination of strafing(!) and responding to your shots with a dodge move(!!) made them feel very different from, say, most of the Quake 2 bestiary. By modern standards they probably aren't that smart, yeah. Far more sophisticated than anything in Quake 2 for sure but Half-Life definitely had more interesting enemy AI just a short while later. edit: Unreal even had a lot more variety in its bestiary than people give it credit for but I think they leaned way too hard on the Skaarj. I think if they distributed the various enemy types more evenly and the weapon feel was improved I'd have enjoyed it a lot more. The environments are incredible but it wasn't so much fun for me to actually fight stuff. How do you improve the weapon feel? Unreal Tournament is pretty much the answer to that question since it took most of the weapon types and made them feel amazing edit 2: Apparently the guys I thought were annoying were the "Skaarj Warriors" and I guess I didn't realize that the guys that could use player weapons were also Skaarj. I don't remember them doing anything particularly spicy though. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 04:03
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| # ? May 31, 2024 21:37 |
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I don't know if this is the place to ask, but has anyone found a way to manually change weapon attributed in Nightmare Reaper? I'm several playthroughs in and I'm kind of sick of how weighted that is against turning a good weapon bad with 'blood ammo' or 'non automatic', and of course no way to save scum about it (like a good retro FPS).
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Mar 16, 2023 04:06
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